Software application servers, examples of which include Oracle WebLogic Server (WLS) and Glassfish, generally provide a managed environment for running enterprise software applications. Recently, technologies have also been developed for use in cloud environments, which allow users or tenants to develop and run their applications within the cloud environment, and to take advantage of distributed resources provided by the environment. As such, class loaders, as a fundamental module of any software application server, need to be modified to fulfill the requirements of such a cloud environment.